Winter 1996, Zaduo region, Qinghai.
The wind was sharp as a knife.
Under the moonlight, countless wheel tracks crisscrossed up the gentle slope. Dozens of heavy vehicles were scattered at the end of the tracks. People sat in each vehicle, their lights either bright or dim. Viewed from above, the vast formation of vehicles spread out like scattered fireflies, or like fallen kites, each trailing long track lines behind them.
At the center of the vehicle formation was an army-green Beijing Jeep 212. The window beside the driver’s seat was lowered slightly, and from inside came the Cantonese theme song of the Hong Kong TV drama “Shanghai Bund.”
“Turning through a thousand bays and a thousand beaches, still unable to resolve this struggle…”
Three people sat in the car.
In the driver’s seat was a man in his fifties, his temples showing traces of gray. He wore a military overcoat and had a bag of roasted peanuts with its top opened beside him. He peeled them one by one, rubbing off the inner skin. In Tibet’s cold and dry weather, the tiny pieces of peanut skin floated around due to static electricity, dispersing along with the aroma trapped within the shells.
In the passenger seat sat a young woman in her twenties. On her lap was a Japanese-made portable Sanyo cassette player, from which “Shanghai Bund” was playing. However, she wasn’t paying much attention to it, instead powdering her face with a compact mirror. She had used too much powder, and the white fragrant powder billowed around. The old man, choked by the scent, glared at her disapprovingly and couldn’t help saying, “Are you here to work or to compete in a beauty pageant?”
How improper! With her permed waves, face painted ghost-white, and lips surely soon to be painted blood-red – look around, what proper young woman would dress like this? All learned from those Hong Kong and Taiwan celebrities.
The young woman replied carelessly, “My appearance doesn’t affect my work.”
As she spoke, “Shanghai Bund” reached its end. During the few seconds before the next song, when the music stopped, the toy fishing game’s noise from the back seat became rather grating.
The young woman had bought this tape just to listen to “Shanghai Bund.” As she rewound it, she threw an irritated glance at the back seat: “So annoying… And I wanted to say, why did you bring her along when we’re here for work!”
Every word dripped with disdain.
In the back seat sat a little girl, three or four years old, wearing a bright red knitted winter hat, a thick green cotton jacket with white dots, and black round-toed cotton shoes. The shoes were quite substantial, with layers stuffed full of cotton, making them look swollen and large on her feet.
She was bent over playing with a fishing game toy, which was popular at the time. It was wind-up, palm-sized, shaped like a fish pond with five small fish that rose and fell with the unwinding spring. Whenever they rose, the fish would open their mouths, revealing small magnets inside.
The fishing rod had a small magnet at the end of its line – if positioned correctly, it could catch the fish.
Hearing her sister mention her, she alertly reached out to forcefully stop the spring winder, then looked up while sniffling: her small face was smudged gray, with two red patches on her cheeks like most children her age, caused by insufficient protection against the winter wind’s cold bite.
She rolled her big eyes, looking at the old man, then at the young woman.
The old man’s face darkened: “With no one at home, being away for so many days, you’re comfortable leaving your sister with neighbors? Is this how an older sister should behave?”
The young woman, having been scolded, immediately turned her frustration on the little girl: “What are you looking at? Want me to turn your eyes inside out?”
The little girl immediately lowered her head.
Her sister’s disdain for her was something she had always known, but it didn’t matter – she didn’t look down on her sister.
After all, her sister was stylish and beautiful, dressing just like people on TV. At kindergarten, when fighting with Du Xiaomao about whose sister was more beautiful, she had been pinned down and beaten, her braids coming undone.
Although Father often said Sister’s style was strange and ghostly, warning her never to copy it, she genuinely thought it was beautiful.
She had a secret that nobody knew.
She often secretly used her sister’s powder, and lipstick, and even tried on her high heels, click-clacking around the house until she fell and got a big bump on her forehead.
The intro to “Shanghai Bund” started playing again.
The young woman stuffed her powder compact back into her bag and, after some rummaging, pulled out a golden Kiss Me lipstick.
The little girl caught sight of it and her heart immediately jumped to her throat, not daring to breathe.
This was another of her secrets: two days ago, she had secretly played with the lipstick and accidentally broke it in half.
Then she had thought of a solution.
Glue it with paste.
Originally, she had planned to check how well the glue had worked, but they had been traveling these past two days, and her sister’s purse had never left her side. She couldn’t find an opportunity, thinking that in such cold weather, her sister probably wouldn’t bother with makeup…
Who could have guessed she’d suddenly want to powder and paint herself in the middle of the night?
The little girl’s gaze was fixed on that spot.
The lipstick cap was pulled off.
Oh heavens, please help me.
The lipstick base slowly twisted, the bright red wax gradually emerging.
She was dead this time, scolding would be the least of it, and having her hair pulled would be getting off easy – it was the difficult days ahead that worried her most.
Suddenly, the lipstick cap snapped back on.
Huh?
Before she could react, several bright flashlight beams shot toward them, accompanied by footsteps, heavy breathing, and jumbled voices.
The young woman quickly got out of the car to meet them, her voice pleasant and gentle: “Jiang Jun, have you confirmed it?”
The old man also hurriedly left the car.
In moments, people crowded around the car’s front, many talking at once, countless flashlight beams crossing chaotically like disco balls in a dance hall, continuously spinning and shining across the vast wilderness beneath the sky.
The little girl knelt on the back seat, gripping the front seat and straining to listen.
The voices were too chaotic, but she kept hearing one word.
Cave.
Oh, that cave – she knew about it.
Father had discussed it with Sister, saying it was a local legend: a Tibetan man, carrying food and tools, had traveled far to carve mani stones at a monastery. On the way, he discovered a cave, only as wide as a basin, but bottomless. When he stuck his head in to listen, he could hear the whoosh of wind.
The Tibetan man wanted to know how deep the cave was, so he lowered a spindle wound with yak wool thread, but even after using all the thread, it still hadn’t reached the bottom.
She had been listening on the side and interrupted to ask what “a spindle wound with yak wool thread” meant, and Father said it was like a ball of yarn.
Then he asked her: “If our Nanan encountered such a situation, what would you do?”
She never missed a chance to show off and answered: “If one ball of yarn isn’t enough to reach the bottom, I’d use two. The teacher says only by persisting to the end can we accomplish things.”
Like the crow dropping stones into the bottle until it could finally drink the sweet, clear water; like Ma Liang with his magic brush, drawing and drawing until he became a great artist.
Father was very pleased and rewarded her with a White Rabbit milk candy, but Sister snorted and said: “Weirdo.”
It didn’t matter, she didn’t mind Sister’s attitude.
After a while, the old man poked his head into the car and handed her the peanut bag: “Nanan, your sister and I need to take care of something. Be good and stay in the car peeling peanuts, wait for Father and Sister to come back, okay?”
In the plastic bag were peeled white peanuts, empty shells, and unpeeled peanuts still in their shells.
Nanan took the plastic bag and looked anxiously outside: “Are you all leaving? Leaving just me, a little kid, here? What if ghosts come? They’ll eat me up.”
The old man chuckled and pointed to the neighboring car.
Inside, three young men were playing cards, sleeves rolled to their elbows, cigarettes dangling from their mouths.
“Brother Liu and the others will stay to keep you company. Or would you like to go sit in their car?”
“No, it smells bad.”
She didn’t like the smell of smoke.
After thinking for a moment, she pointed at the Sanyo player: “Can I use Sister’s player to listen to ‘Snow White’?”
“Yes.”
This was the perfect time to make requests, and she wanted to ask for more, but couldn’t think of anything else at the moment.
Before leaving, the old man went to speak with Liu: “Nanan is in the car listening to stories. Just keep an eye on her occasionally. She’s very well-behaved, and can sit still listening to stories for an hour or two.”
Liu nodded: “Got it, Uncle Yi, don’t worry.”
Only then did the old man leave reassured.
Someone blew a whistle, and except for these two cars parked in the center, the other vehicles gradually turned off their lights. People kept getting out of their cars and joining the departing group.
Nanan hugged the cassette player, listening to stories with the volume turned to the maximum to drown out the card-playing noise from next door.
She had tossed aside the “Hong Kong and Taiwan Golden Songs” and was now playing a fairy tale cassette.
After finishing side A, she sniffled and switched to side B.
“She finally pulled out a match and struck it against the wall. Whoosh! A tiny flame appeared…”
Nanan lowered her head to grab a peanut and bit into it while thinking about many things.
The Little Match Girl was so pitiful, foreign children were so unfriendly, not even helping to take care of her.
Although Sister was harsh with her, she never got angry with Brother Jiang. Should she ask Brother Jiang to take the blame for breaking the lipstick?
It was so cold here, her breath came out white, and she was getting a bit of a cold…
Suddenly, there was a loud bang above her head as if something had violently crashed down, and simultaneously, the car shook violently.
The sound and shock made her vision go black, and the cassette player fell from her knees.
It fell silent.
When the player stopped, she realized how quiet everything was around her. For a moment, she couldn’t even hear the wind.
It took her quite a while to recover, her mouth slightly open, still holding a peanut between her fingers.
The neighboring car was pitch black – weren’t Brother Liu and the others playing cards? Where had everyone gone?
She looked up at the car roof.
The roof shell had been flat before, but now it was dented in with a human shape, limbs spread wide.
She stared at that human shape, clutching the peanut in her palm.
Streaks of blood gradually appeared on both car windows, but it was so cold they quickly froze. Looking out from inside the car, they were long and short, not red but more like unevenly cut black tassels.
After a while, there came a rustling sound from the roof.
Something was crawling up there.
Then, a hand reached down, gripping the outside of the car window.
It wasn’t a hand, but rather like a hand of bone stripped of flesh.
She stared blankly.
She wasn’t afraid of bones. Once, the middle school near her kindergarten had thrown out some biology teaching materials, including animal specimens and human skeleton models. After school, many children gathered fearfully but curiously around the garbage pile to watch, but she wasn’t afraid. She had swung a thigh bone around, performing a self-invented supreme sword technique, until her sister came to pick her up and dragged her away by the ear.
The bone hand outside the window slowly clenched, scratching against the window.
The sound was unpleasant, scritch-scratch.
Nanan swallowed hard, nervously shifting her bottom, slowly getting down from the car seat.
Very quietly, she pulled over her father’s black cotton coat from beside her, covered herself completely, then quietly curled up and lay down.
Scritch-scratch, the sound continued.
Click, the door handle was turned.
Whoosh, the wind gusted into the car as the door opened.
The plastic bag rustled loudly in the wind, the sound urgent and dense. Peanut shells rolled around, on the car seat, and the cotton coat. The peanut skins were the lightest, floating piece by piece into the night outside the car.
Nanan kept her eyes tightly shut, her palm sweaty, that peanut still hard against her palm, pressing just as hard against her heart.
I’m well hidden.
You won’t see me.
You can’t see me.
You definitely can’t see me.