The Beijing summer camp for elite schools organized by the Experimental School lasted five days, from August 10th to 15th. However, Jiang Qiaoxi was scheduled to start a two-week course at Tsinghua University on the 12th. He decided to buy train tickets for the same departure as Lin Qile and the others, even booking his hotel two days in advance.
Cai Fangyuan strolled into the sleeper car, holding a bowl of instant noodles.
Outside the window, vast wheat fields stretched endlessly under a pitch-black sky. Cai Fangyuan grumbled, “Aren’t there high-speed trains now? Why are we still riding this old thing?”
The students from Experimental High School who had signed up for the summer camp occupied several carriages. They would sleep through the night, arriving in Beijing early the next morning.
Du Shang sat on a small fold-down seat in the corridor, watching the TV series “Struggle” on Yu Qiao’s MP4 player.
Yu Qiao sat across from him, flipping through the summer camp itinerary and a Beijing map.
Du Shang couldn’t help but exclaim, “Just look at Milai. She’s such a wonderful girl – sunny, kind, forgiving, generous. Why does Lu Tao always make her sad? Why are all these guys like this?”
Yu Qiao glanced up, noticing Jiang Qiaoxi wasn’t around. He drawled, “Which guys are you talking about?”
Du Shang shook his head vigorously, clearly annoyed.
Qin Yeyun sat cross-legged on Yu Qiao’s bunk, leafing through the latest issue of “Easy” magazine. She elbowed Lin Qile, asking if she knew the results of the recent “Good Boy” competition finals: “Jin Boran won!”
Lin Qile, munching on a red bean bread, was reading the advice column in “Girlfriend Campus” magazine word by word. She asked, “Who’s Jin Boran?”
Du Shang suddenly looked up: “I know who that is!”
Qin Yeyun and Lin Qile turned to look at him simultaneously.
Du Shang said, “Isn’t he the one who looks a bit like me? With a bit of baby fat?”
Qin Yeyun grabbed a banana peel from the table and threw it at him: “Have you no shame?”
Jiang Qiaoxi walked in from the adjacent carriage. His ticket wasn’t bought with the school group, so he was seated a bit far from them.
As soon as he arrived, Lin Qile looked up at him. Jiang Qiaoxi sat down on Cai Fangyuan’s bed opposite Yu Qiao’s bunk, facing Lin Qile. He looked at her and seemed to smile.
Cai Fangyuan, after taking a few bites of his noodles, stood beside Lin Qile and suddenly began reading aloud from the advice column in her teen magazine.
“Refusing premarital sex has its merits, especially for you as a student. You must protect your-” Cai Fangyuan choked mid-sentence, bending over and coughing violently. Lin Qile kicked him from behind. Amid the laughter of those around them and Yu Qiao’s whistling, Cai Fangyuan received several kicks from her, nearly spilling his noodle bowl.
Jiang Qiaoxi sat behind them. When Lin Qile turned to look at him, she found him smiling too, which annoyed her even more.
The train arrived in Beijing at five in the morning.
Lin Qile woke up just after four. Sleeping in the middle bunk, separated by a thin partition, she could hear a boy from Class 17 snoring thunderously. Frustrated, Lin Qile sat up and ran her fingers through her hair, wanting to scream but having nowhere to vent. She looked down at her phone and saw a text message.
Lin Qile straightened her clothes, grabbed her water bottle and MP3 player, and climbed down from her bunk, accidentally stepping on Yu Qiao’s leg in the lower berth.
“Watch where you’re stepping, will you?” Yu Qiao grumbled, his face covered with a shirt as he slept, clearly bothered by the snoring guy.
Meanwhile, Cai Fangyuan lay on his back, sound asleep.
Lin Qile put on her shoes and headed to the next carriage, not forgetting to give Cai Fangyuan another hard kick as revenge, jolting him awake.
Jiang Qiaoxi sat in the lower bunk, reading a book. The surrounding area was quiet, with most people asleep and no particularly annoying noises. Lin Qile approached, following the bunk number from the text message. Jiang Qiaoxi looked up as she arrived and stood.
Lin Qile sat on the inside, with Jiang Qiaoxi sitting next to her on the outside, careful not to disturb the sleeping passengers across from them.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Game theory.”
“Why are you reading it in English?”
Jiang Qiaoxi didn’t answer, seemingly taken aback by her question.
Lin Qile immediately realized her question had exposed both how poor her English was and how little she understood the vast gap between herself and Jiang Qiaoxi.
Jiang Qiaoxi asked, “Why didn’t you bring a vocabulary book?”
Lin Qile mumbled, “I’m here to have fun. Why would I bring a vocabulary book…”
Jiang Qiaoxi lowered his eyes, now seeming a bit displeased.
Lin Qile looked up and asked, “Are you free until the 12th?”
Jiang Qiaoxi looked at her expression: “What for?”
Lin Qile said hopefully, “I want to go shopping at Wangfujing tomorrow. Will you come?”
Jiang Qiaoxi smiled: “Aren’t you supposed to be visiting Peking University and Tsinghua University?”
“We can’t spend the whole day just at those two places…” Lin Qile said softly, gazing out the window again.
The train rumbled along the tracks, swaying gently like a mother patting a swaddled baby.
Lin Qile had earphones in, initially just sitting beside Jiang Qiaoxi and staring out the window. She didn’t want to study English anymore, thinking she had already tried her best and could only learn so much.
Her eyelids began to droop slowly. The sound of Jiang Qiaoxi turning pages beside her, a soft rustling like feathers, was reminiscent of sounds from the mountains or beside a small bed.
Lin Qile fell asleep, exhausted. Her forehead rested against the cold, hard window frame before someone gently moved her to lean on his shoulder.
Cai Fangyuan, rudely awakened by Lin Qile’s kick, had nowhere to vent his frustration. Taking advantage of the quiet night, he went to the restroom. On his way back, he spotted a slender figure standing in the corridor of the adjacent carriage.
Cai Fangyuan approached, holding his breath. Peering over Cen Xiaoman’s shoulder, he saw Jiang Qiaoxi in the lower bunk of the opposite carriage, holding the sleeping Lin Yingtao and reading a book.
Cen Xiaoman turned, startled to see Cai Fangyuan, her face paling.
Cai Fangyuan quickly stepped back, waving his hands and smiling, “I just happened to pass by and got curious, so I took a peek!”
Cen Xiaoman swallowed, still looking at him, her face drained of color.
Cai Fangyuan had long known about Cen Xiaoman’s secret crush on Jiang Qiaoxi. From junior high to high school, who didn’t know by now?
Such a pretty girl, reduced to sneaking peeks in the middle of the night.
Cai Fangyuan said, “I’ve lived near those two since elementary school.”
The narrow corridor of the train car was lined with bunks, filled with the sleeping breaths of travelers heading to Beijing.
Cen Xiaoman had never spoken to Cai Fangyuan before. She was a quiet girl, raised with strict discipline and high self-expectations, rarely speaking to boys. She asked, “You mean when Jiang Qiaoxi transferred to Qunshan?”
Cai Fangyuan realized Jiang Qiaoxi had been a transfer student back then. He nodded, “Yeah when Jiang Qiaoxi transferred to our school, whenever we looked for him, we had to go to Lin Yingtao’s house.”
Cen Xiaoman asked in confusion, “What do you mean?”
Cai Fangyuan gestured vaguely in Jiang Qiaoxi’s direction, “What do you think I mean? You should go back to sleep.”
Beijing in August was sweltering. The streets were filled with signs counting down over 300 days to the Olympics, bobble-headed Fuwa mascots, and “Beijing Welcomes You” banners.
The Experimental High School students left Beijing West Station and took the same bus to their hotel near Zhongguancun. On the way, Lin Qile was planning to buy Olympic souvenirs for her parents, old cloth shoes, and pastries from Beijing Diaoheoxiang. She called her aunt from the bus: “Aunt, I’m in Beijing!”
Yu Qiao, who hadn’t slept well the night before, sat in front of her and could barely stand her chatter, wishing he could cover his face with his backpack.
Lin Qile told her aunt, “I’ll come to your place tonight! I need to go to the hotel with my classmates first… I brought you sausages and jujube steamed buns made by my parents, and sweet bamboo shoots from my classmate’s home… I want to eat… I want to eat Peking duck and candied pork knuckles. Can we still buy a rolling donkey and sugar-fried cake near your place, Aunt?”
Cai Fangyuan beside her couldn’t take it anymore: “You slept well enough, how about letting others get some rest?”
They arrived at the hotel in the morning, rested briefly, and in the afternoon, the high school students followed their teachers to their first stop, Renmin University of China. Standing at the university gate, Lin Qile looked out at Beijing’s streets, noticing slogans everywhere.
New Beijing, New Olympics. And, See you in 2008.
2008… Lin Qile repeated in her mind, suddenly feeling as if she were standing in a gust of wind, seven years passing in an instant.
Even during summer break, there were quite a few students who hadn’t gone home to the Renmin University campus. They were adults but still retained a student-like air. Walking among her high school classmates, Lin Qile saw couples of university students coming towards them from time to time. No matter how she looked at them, they didn’t seem much older than her.
So this is what university is like. Lin Qile stood at the entrance of the Mingde Building taking tourist photos, happily posing with Cai Fangyuan and Du Shang by the One Ladle Pool… Passing by the bulletin boards, she saw posters for various student clubs, graduate school ads, and lecture notices. She heard Du Shang saying nearby that he planned to join a street dance club at university.
Lin Qile stood on the steps of the Mingfa Building, gazing towards the setting sun.
She suddenly wondered what the University of California, Berkeley looked like.
After an hour of touring, the class president from neighboring Class 17 suggested they all go to Haidian Book City together. Lin Qile wasn’t in the mood to go, though. She went to buy an iced fruit juice and heard Du Shang shouting from a small shop by the road, “Hey, hey, they have Chinese Paladin IV here!”
Lin Qile sat on the steps by the roadside, her backpack slumping down, drinking her juice like this.
Across the street was a middle school. Lin Qile saw that the school gate was ajar, but middle school students were still coming and going.
Some boys and girls were laughing and talking, initially walking arm in arm, when suddenly a boy pulled a girl close, and they ran out together, laughing uproariously.
Lin Qile turned to watch them, finding it hard not to feel envious.
Suddenly, there was a buzzing sound from her backpack. Lin Qile put down her juice cup.
“Where have you gotten to in your tour?” Jiang Qiaoxi asked.
“We’ve finished touring Renmin University,” Lin Qile said, picking up her phone. “Du Shang and the others are buying games.”
“What games?”
“Chinese Paladin IV,” Lin Qile said, adding, “It’s the official version!”
The phone went quiet, with only the sound of Lin Qile biting her straw to drink juice audible for a moment.
“Yingtao,” Jiang Qiaoxi said, “Is that old computer at your house still around?”
Lin Yingtao mumbled, “It’s not that old…”
Jiang Qiaoxi asked, “Can it still be used?”
Lin Yingtao suddenly remembered the time after Jiang Qiaoxi had left Qunshan. She didn’t like studying then and had nothing to do every day. When she opened the computer to play games, all she found were the records Jiang Qiaoxi had left before leaving.
Whenever Lin Yingtao tried to forget him, she always ended up seeing traces of him. And even when she couldn’t see him, like now, she thought of him every minute, every second.
But he hadn’t left yet.
He was going to America, to the University of California, Berkeley, but they hadn’t parted ways yet.
Lin Yingtao stood up from the roadside. She looked back and saw that Du Shang and the others were still in the small shop.
Perhaps because she hadn’t spoken for a while, Jiang Qiaoxi asked, “Yingtao?”
Lin Yingtao walked towards the street corner. She couldn’t see a subway station nearby, so she started running after a passing bus.
“Jiang Qiaoxi,” Lin Yingtao said. She was on the streets of an unfamiliar city, surrounded by people she didn’t know. It felt like many years ago when she first came to the provincial capital. “Do you want to come with me to my aunt’s house now?”
Our Generation – Chapter Notes:
- On April 18, 2007, China’s railway system underwent its sixth major speed increase. Building on years of operating express trains and introducing foreign-made high-speed train sets, China unveiled its brand of high-speed trains: the CRH (China Railway High-speed) series, also known as the Hexie (Harmony) EMU trains.
- “Struggle”: A television drama directed by Zhao Baogang and starring Tong Dawei, among others. The series, which premiered on Shanghai’s TV drama channel on May 16, 2007, depicts the romantic experiences and career pursuits of Beijing’s post-80s generation.
- “Easy”: A magazine founded in 2002 that expanded in 2007 to become a fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle publication.
- On the evening of July 21, 2007, the finale of the “Come on! Good Boy” competition, hosted by Dragon TV, concluded. Jing Boran emerged as the champion.
- On August 1, 2007, “The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4” (Chinese: Xianjian Qixia Zhuan Si) was released.
- In 2007, Beijing Subway Lines 4 and 10 were still under construction and not yet operational.