Lin Qile crouched in the backyard, using the faint light from the porch to feed two limp little white rabbits in a cage with dried grass leaves from a bowl.
“Juanzi!” Lin, the electrician, called out as he returned home from overtime work, covered in dust. “Prepare some food, Manager Jiang and Team Leader Yu are here, and Manager Jiang hasn’t eaten yet!”
The living room TV was playing the ending theme of a drama series that had been on for several days. Lin Qile could already sing along.
“Rare to have such good skills, yet unable to break through the barriers of love.”
“Cherry,” Lin’s mother hurried into the kitchen, pushing open the screen door to the backyard, “We have guests. Come in quickly and help me wash some peanuts.”
Lin Qile put down the grass bowl. As she walked into the kitchen, she overheard her father in the living room saying, “Come, Qiaoxi, sit down too. Look how pale you are, you must be starving!”
A man’s voice, very deep, unlike Uncle Yu’s or her father’s, Lin Qile thought, must be that Manager Jiang.
“Yesterday, after getting off the highway,” Manager Jiang was saying, “it was just dinner time, but there wasn’t much to eat. The driver and I saw a noodle shop by the road, so we took this boy in for a bowl of beef noodles.”
“Wasn’t it enough?” Lin’s father asked.
“He only ate half a bowl,” Manager Jiang said, “and threw it all up as soon as we got back in the car.”
“Threw up?” Lin’s father exclaimed in surprise.
Uncle Yu lit a cigarette beside them and put down his lighter: “Those noodle shops near the highway exit, who knows what kind of meat they use. The young lad’s stomach must be upset.”
Lin’s father said regretfully, “No wonder he didn’t do well on the entrance exam.”
Uncle Yu asked, “Did he vomit on the car seat?”
“No, that would have been troublesome,” Manager Jiang said helplessly. “He threw up on the little jacket his cousin bought him from America. I had to take it off and wrap it in a plastic bag. I thought about throwing it away, but the boy wouldn’t let me.”
Lin Qile finished washing the peanuts in the bowl and drained the water. She wiped her hands and peeked out from the kitchen doorway, quietly observing the scene outside.
Her father and Uncle Yu sat on small stools around the tea table, while the only large sofa was occupied by an unfamiliar uncle – must be Manager Jiang. Jiang Qiaoxi, wearing an all-black outfit that made Lin Qile too intimidated to speak, sat among the adults with his square backpack.
Seeing him again, Lin Qile thought his complexion seemed even worse than earlier in the principal’s office, even paler.
Electrician Lin reached out to pat Jiang Qiaoxi’s head, probably guessing the child was particularly fond of that jacket, though the adults didn’t think much of it. “Where did you put the dirty clothes?” Lin asked Manager Jiang, “Bring them over and let Juanzi help wash them, we’re about to do laundry anyway—”
Manager Jiang hurriedly declined: “No, no, that would be too much trouble for Lin.”
Lin smiled and said, “Don’t be so polite, we’re neighbors now. Things are a bit tougher at the worksite.”
Jiang Qiaoxi had been sitting for a while, his backpack still on his shoulders. He seemed ready to leave at any moment, but his father showed no intention of going. Lin Qile brought out a plate of fried peanuts and a basket of pre-steamed jujube buns, along with six pairs of chopsticks.
Manager Jiang, sitting on the sofa, looked up at her. Although he was considerably older than Electrician Lin, he was handsome, like an old-school movie star. Manager Jiang squinted at Lin Qile and said kindly, “This must be Lin’s daughter, we met this afternoon. Your name is… Lin Ying?”
Uncle Yu took the chopsticks from Lin Qile’s hands and arranged them on the tea table. He mentioned Lin Qile as if talking about his daughter: “Her name is Lin Yingtao!”
Electrician Lin chimed in with a smile: “She used to be called Lin Yingtao, but changed her name in second grade. Now she’s Lin Qile.”
Lin Qile always behaved sweetly and obediently in front of adults, smiling charmingly to win their affection.
But Jiang Qiaoxi showed no interest in her name, sitting motionless on the sofa with his eyes half-lowered.
Manager Jiang laughed in surprise: “Cherry? How did you come up with such a name?”
Just before dinner, another visitor arrived – Cai Fangyuan’s father, Manager Cai, who came specifically for the late-night gathering with his old friends. He brought half a bottle of Maotai to liven up the atmosphere.
The small dual-career worker’s dormitory, with its living room of less than ten square meters, suddenly became very crowded. Lin Qile, having already eaten dinner early, decided to give up her space. She returned to the backyard, sitting dazedly on the steps in front of the rabbit cage.
Lin’s mother finished her work in the kitchen and came out. After Lin whispered a few words in her ear, she accepted the keys from Manager Jiang amid his repeated thanks, going to retrieve the supposedly plastic-wrapped dirty little jacket. Lin’s mother said, “Oh, don’t mention it!”
Manager Cai called from outside: “Cherry!”
Lin Qile returned to the living room.
Uncle Cai, having had some drinks, was already red-faced.
“Take Qiaoxi to your room to read books, study, and do homework,” Uncle Cai instructed, “New classmate, go on, get to know each other.”
Lin Qile was startled, her big eyes wide open.
The four adults sat together, drinking and smoking, discussing work at the site or the various affairs of people around them. Jiang Qiaoxi, a young boy sitting among them with his backpack on, indeed looked out of place.
“Qiaoxi, have you eaten enough?” Lin’s father asked softly from the side.
Jiang Qiaoxi didn’t speak, but he stood up.
“Go with Cherry,” Manager Jiang said from beside him, “Didn’t you want to study? Go study at Uncle Lin’s house for a while.”
The worksite dormitory was simple, with limited space. Even for a couple with a child, they could only have a living room and one bedroom.
Lin Qile pushed open the door from the living room to the bedroom – the first thing in view was a double bed where her parents slept. There was a desk at the head of the bed, which her father used as a study desk and her mother used for her knitting and cosmetics.
Three large wardrobes stood beside the bed, dividing the rectangular bedroom in half. The small inner space created by this division housed Lin Qile’s small bed and desk – her little world.
Lin Qile pushed aside the books, newspapers, and knitting on her parents’ desk and turned on the desk lamp.
“You… sit here!” Lin Qile turned around, hands behind her back, speaking nervously.
Jiang Qiaoxi walked up beside her, taller than her, still silent. He took off his backpack and placed it on the desk.
The bedroom door closed, shutting out the noise of the adults outside. Inside, it was very quiet, so quiet that one dared not breathe loudly. Lin Qile walked back to her desk and quietly sat down, her back to Jiang Qiaoxi.
Looking up, posters of H.O.T. and characters from “My Fair Princess” were pasted on the wall. Looking down, images of Sailor Moon and Ran Mouri were pressed under the glass surface of her desk.
Lin Qile had already finished her homework for the day. She pulled out last week’s “China Children’s News” from her pile of comics, opened it, and stood it up, pretending to read it seriously.
She quietly turned her shoulder to look back.
Jiang Qiaoxi sat straight at Electrician Lin’s desk, opening his backpack on the tabletop. Lin Qile had already found it strange – Jiang Qiaoxi’s hair was black, his clothes and pants were black, his sneakers were black, and his backpack was black.
Now, even the pencil case he took out from his backpack, Lin Qile noticed, was also black.
Jiang Qiaoxi took out books from his backpack, unlike the unified textbooks Lin Qile and her classmates used. These were advanced math materials he had brought from the provincial capital.
“Do you…” Lin Qile suddenly spoke up, her voice trembling slightly without her realizing it, “Do you want some candy?”
The small bag of wedding candy Lin’s father had brought home was sitting on Lin Qile’s desk. She hadn’t eaten many yet.
Jiang Qiaoxi, with the back of his head facing Lin Qile, silently opened his book.
“Do you listen to cassettes?” Lin Qile asked.
A row of dozens of popular music cassettes was neatly arranged at the head of Lin’s father’s bed. Her father loved singing, and so did Lin Qile. Her favorite song to sing along with her father was, “Ah Ha, Give Me a Cup of Forget-Me Water.”
Her second favorite was “Don’t Break My Heart.”
Seeing that Jiang Qiaoxi remained unmoved, Lin Qile put down the youth newspaper she had barely read and stood up: “Do you read ‘Mickey Mouse’?”
A stack of “Mickey Mouse” magazines nearly half a meter high sat beside Lin Qile’s desk. This was perhaps the most precious of all Lin Qile’s treasures.
Every kid who came to Lin Qile’s house couldn’t resist watching “Mickey Mouse.”
But Jiang Qiaoxi didn’t even turn his head. He opened his pencil case, took out a pen, and started working on his Math Olympiad problems.
Lin Qile pouted in an unnoticed corner.
She didn’t know what Jiang Qiaoxi liked. She had never met anyone her age who was so difficult to communicate with. Jiang Qiaoxi seemed to reject everything in this small town.
Indeed, Lin Qile had heard her older brother Chen Minghao say before: The mountain construction site was old and backward, and anyone who had been to the provincial capital headquarters wouldn’t like it here.
But Lin Qile had never been to the provincial capital. She didn’t know what kids from there liked.
“Do you want to see the little white rabbit?” Lin Qile asked.
Jiang Qiaoxi was holding a mechanical pencil. As he was writing, the pencil tip suddenly paused.
He didn’t look like a real boy at all. The color from his neck to his cheeks was like snow, like the clusters of pear blossoms blooming on the mountain in spring. His eyes appeared extremely black in contrast. Jiang Qiaoxi turned around, suddenly glancing at Lin Qile, causing her to purse her lips.
“What are you two doing here?” Lin’s mom was washing clothes when she saw Lin Qile excitedly running over to show Manager Jiang’s son the way. She pushed open the screen door and ran into the backyard.
Jiang Qiaoxi seemed surprised that there was a yard behind this small house. His gaze slowly wandered from the old tires in the yard, the deflated soccer ball, and the small vegetable patch, and finally settled on the little rabbit Lin Qile held up to his eyes.
“Here you go!” Lin Qile placed her beloved white rabbit in Jiang Qiaoxi’s arms and then looked at them expectantly.
The grass leaf in the white rabbit’s mouth brushed against Jiang Qiaoxi’s black jacket.
The little rabbit was warm and soft, fluffy like a ball of cotton, or a cloud plucked from the sky by immortals. Jiang Qiaoxi’s stiff hands held it, watching its three-petaled mouth move, its long ears drooping docilely onto Jiang Qiaoxi’s hand, warmly nuzzling him.
Manager Jiang received a call from his wife in the provincial capital. Because he had just moved, the call was relayed to Lin the electrician’s home phone. Manager Jiang held the phone, the cord trailing behind him as he walked to the kitchen door. He saw Jiang Qiaoxi sitting on the steps in the backyard, playing with a rabbit with Lin the electrician’s daughter.
Manager Jiang frowned slightly.
“I told you it’s fine,” he said into the receiver, his tone rather impolite.
Perhaps because he was in someone else’s home, he couldn’t express his frustration fully. But his wife, Liang Hongfei, wouldn’t let him off easily.
“Knowing your son has a weak stomach, you took him to eat at a roadside fly restaurant as soon as you arrived in Qunshan?”
“Enough,” Manager Jiang said quietly, the receiver pressed to his ear. “Stop nagging me.”
He hung up the phone abruptly.
Around 9 PM, Manager Jiang was ready to leave, taking his son Jiang Qiaoxi with him.
Lin’s mom hung the freshly washed small jacket on a hanger, still dripping water, and handed it to Jiang Qiaoxi: “Hang it up when you get home, it’ll be dry by tomorrow.”
Manager Jiang, smelling of alcohol, said, “Quickly thank Auntie.”
Jiang Qiaoxi, carrying his black square backpack, looked up at Lin’s mom: “Thank you, auntie.”
“Such a good boy,” Lin’s mom smiled, “This child is so handsome.”
Lin Qile stood behind her father, also looking at Jiang Qiaoxi. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but she felt Jiang Qiaoxi’s gaze had swept across her face as he left.
But it didn’t linger. So Lin Qile didn’t know if Jiang Qiaoxi meant to say goodbye to her.
Were they friends now?
After washing up, it was time for Lin Qile to go to bed. Uncle Yu and Uncle Cai were still in the living room, talking with her dad over peanuts.
The bedroom lights were off, and Lin Qile lay on her small bed. In the darkness, under the gaze of the poster characters, her open eyes were especially bright.
Jiang Qiaoxi sat on the backyard steps, pinching some grass leaves. The little rabbit approached his hand, nibbling the grass leaves bit by bit. Lin Qile watched intently as the rabbit ate. She thought, even kids from the provincial capital liked rabbits.
“Your name is Lin Qile,” Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly said.
Lin Qile was startled and looked up.
Jiang Qiaoxi was looking at her too.
The light under the eaves dimly illuminated half of Jiang Qiaoxi’s face, making his expression unclear. Lin Qile heard him ask, “Are you the only child in your family?”
Now, lying on her small bed, Lin Qile fingered the amber hanging around her neck and looked out the window.
What did he mean by asking that question?
At midnight, Lin Qile came out of the bedroom with disheveled hair, rubbing her eyes. She wanted to get some water but unexpectedly found that the adults’ gathering hadn’t dispersed; they were still talking in the living room.
“I met Manager Jiang’s previous son,” Uncle Cai, still slightly drunk, pointed at the coffee table surface, his voice very low, “His name was Jiang Mengchu, entered the University of Science and Technology of China’s youth class at 13, praised by everyone at the provincial headquarters, a prodigy!”
“At that time, everyone said Jiang Zheng was going to transfer to Anhui State Power to accompany his son’s studies. The couple put so much effort into nurturing this child, who would have thought he’d go to a summer camp and never return, dying in some mountain valley.”
“Who could bear that? It’s like the sky falling on a family,” Uncle Cai said.
Lin’s dad lamented, “It’s indeed too unfortunate.”
Uncle Yu took a sip from his teacup and tapped his cigarette ash into the ashtray: “No wonder I heard the old team leader say a few years ago that Jiang Zheng always had a gloomy face at headquarters, not talking to anyone, not reporting on work, not even shaving his beard.”
“He’s still like that,” Uncle Cai said, “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been transferred to the Qunshan project department.”
“Now that he has another child, he should try to move on,” Lin’s dad said. “His kid who came over earlier looked so good, handsome too. I heard his academic performance in the provincial capital is excellent.”
“Don’t mention it,” Uncle Cai said. “When they lost their first child, the couple almost divorced. The boss said, have another child, family planning allows it.”
“At the time, we thought, maybe with a new child, there would be hope for this family, it could ease the tension between the couple.”
“Now look, this child is already nine years old, so promising, but neither of the parents cares…” Uncle Cai shook his head, “If we had known…”
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Our Generation – Chapter Notes:
“A rare good skill, yet always failing at love”: The theme song from the 1999 TV drama “Little Li Flying Knife” starring Jiao Enjun.
H.O.T: Korean pop group debuted in 1996.
Tuxedo Mask: Male protagonist from the Japanese anime “Sailor Moon,” first aired in mainland China in 1997.
Ran Mouri: Female protagonist from the Japanese anime “Detective Conan,” first aired in mainland China in 1999.
“China Children’s News”: Children’s publication founded in 1951, published every Wednesday.
“Give me a cup of forgetfulness water”: Song “Forgetfulness Water” released by Hong Kong singer Andy Lau in 1994.
“Don’t break my heart”: Song released by mainland rock band Black Panther in 1991.
“Mickey Mouse”: Comic magazine published by Disney in mainland China since 1993, changed to bi-weekly in 1999, priced at 6.80 yuan per issue.